Listen live

Aussie pair fall in women's doubles final

End of the road ... Ashleigh Barty (2R) and Casey Dellacqua (R) took a set off the number one seeded Italian duo.

Joe Castro: AAP Image

Australian underdogs Ashleigh Barty and Casey Dellacqua have gone down fighting as Italian top seeds Roberta Vinci and Sara Errani clinched the Australian Open women's doubles title.

The Italians added the championship to last year's French Open and US Open trophies with their 6-2, 3-6, 6-2 win.

Barty and Dellacqua had been bidding to become the first all-Australian women's pair to win their home major since 1977, with no local duo having even reached the final since that year.

They were combating an extreme experience gulf compared to the Italians, particularly 16-year-old Barty, who had played just one grand slam doubles match before this tournament and had never won a main draw match in a major in either singles or doubles.

It seemed set to be smooth sailing for the world's top-ranked doubles players when they raced through the first set and even moreso when Dellacqua's serve was broken for the third time in the match to give the top seeds a 2-1 lead in the second.

But the Australians grabbed their first break of the match next game then broke Errani again for a 5-3 lead, with Barty playing the leading role in gaining that advantage, before serving out the set.

The Australians further bolstered hopes of an unlikely victory, when they claimed another break of serve to open the third set.

But the favourites stepped up the pressure, breaking back immediately, then after the set was squared at 2-2, ripping through the last four games for the loss of just six points.

Barty and Dellacqua were the first all-Australian pair to reach the final since 1977, with Dianne Fromholtz and Helen Gourlay taking the title in January of that year while Evonne Goolagong Cawley and Gourlay reached the final in December of that year but it was washed out.

Earlier on Friday, Australians Jarmila Gajdosova and Matthew Ebden booked a place in Sunday's mixed doubles final with a 7-5, 7-6 (7-5) semi-final win over Kazakhstan's Yaroslava Shvedova and Uzbekistan's Denis Istomin.

They will play Czech pair Lucie Hradecka and Frantisek Cermak in the final.